Items tagged "Toyota Production System" for Taiichi Ohno

Management Books

Workplace Management: Taiichi Ohno
by
Taiichi Ohno
"If you insist on blindly calculating individual costs and waste time insisting that this is profitable of that is not profitable, you will just increase the cost of your low volume products. For this reason there are many cases in this world where companies will discontinue car models that are actually profitable, but are money losers according to their calculations. Likewise, there are cases where companies sell a lot of model that they think is profitable but in fact are only increasing their loses." page 32

The Birth of Lean:
by
Taiichi Ohno, Eiji Toyoda
by Koichi Shimokawa and Takahiro Fujimoto (Editors).
There are a lot of books that describe the Toyota Production System, but most do so in a way that implies that there was a master plan to create a company-wide improvement system. But as the pioneers in The Birth of Lean explain, there was no master planâ€”TPS came about through experimentation, trial and error, and an evolution of ideas that shaped Toyotaâ€™s structure and management system.
This is an honest look at the origins of Lean, written in the words of the people who created the system. Through interviews and annotated talks, you will hear first-person accounts of what these innovators and problem-solvers did and why they did it. Youâ€™ll read rare, personal commentaries that explain the interplay of (sometimes opposing) ideas that created a revolution in thinking.
In The Birth of Lean, youâ€™ll get a glimpse inside the minds and thought processes of the systemâ€™s creators and innovators:
Taiichi Ohno ”the man who envisioned a way of working that would evolve into the Toyota Production System
Eiji Toyoda ”the former Toyota President and Chairman who oversaw the development of TPS and the inclusion of TQC at Toyota
Kikuo Suzumura ”the Toyota manager recognized as the most influential in translating Ohnoâ€™s ideas into actionable items
Michikazu Tanaka ”the manager and executive at Toyota affiliate Daihatsu who adapted TPS to his organization
Kaneyoshi Kusunoki ”the former head of Toyota's production engineering organization who refined the buffering system in use in Toyotaâ€™s operations
Masao Nemoto ”the Toyota executive central to the deployment of TQC at Toyota

Management Articles

Interview with Masaaki Imai on Taiichi Ohno
by
Masaaki Imai, Taiichi Ohno
"What was he like to converse with?
He didn't say much. Actually, he much preferred to listen...
When you introduce Kaizen, the workers are the most grateful recipients of this improvement. They find that because of the various standardized work introduced - because things become much more regimented and well managed - they can carry on with their work without any surprises. And the result is a much more satisfying job. Workers are the greatest recipients of Kaizen work."

Toyota's Top Engineer on How to Develop Thinking People
by
Jon Miller, Taiichi Ohno
"Mr. Ohno often said to us, 'Don't look with your eyes, look with your feet. Don't think with you head, think with your hands.' He also taught us, 'People who can't understand numbers are useless. The gemba where numbers are not visible is also bad. However, people who only look at the numbers are the worst of all.'"